Welfare Spending & Taxes

I have said it before, and I stand by my original premise:  liberals are significantly impaired mathematically.  I enter into evidence the following: it has been estimated that welfare expenditure in this country will increase 80% in the next ten years. For those of you that are skeptical, recall that welfare spending has already increased 32% in the first four years in Obama’s reign of spending, based largely on aggressive enrollment tactics by federal recruitment workers, the USDA and the Department of Homeland Security.  In dollars, that amounts to $11 trillion, or a remarkable one quarter of cumulative federal spending.   Recall, the recent fiscal cliff tax increase on the politically expanded definition of “millionaires and billionaires” amounts to an increase in revenue of 60 billion dollars a year, or $600 billion over that same ten year period.  This tax increase is being harvested from the 1% of the population that already pays 21.3% of the nation’s tax burden on the premise that they are not paying their “fair share”.  Now for those of you having difficulty following this line of reasoning, let me reiterate:  Welfare expenditure will increase to 11 trillion dollars in the next ten years whilst tax increases on the “rich” will bring in only an additional 600 billion dollars to pay for our government’s entitlement spending.  In case the conservative claim that such spending is “unsustainable” is using words with too many syllables for you, let’s just pare it down to “we can’t afford it.” And President Obama actually told Mr. Boehner during fiscal cliff negotiations (if you want to call Obama’s “my way or the highway” style a negotiation) that this country doesn’t have a spending problem.  I beg to differ. What this country appears to have is a president problem.

And where precisely do you leftist sheep think we are going to go to make up for this socialist shortfall? I trust by now that you are all enjoying the reduction in your take home pay in the New Year after suspecting that the tax increase would be solely on the backs of the 1%. If those of you in the middle class don’t think you’re next in line for a tax increase……time to think again.  As a case in point, the WSJ Editorial page highlighted the following quips from our democrat aristocracy that bear repeating: 

[the fiscal cliff deal] “was not enough on the revenue side”  Nancy Pelosi

“additional revenues” are likely in future negotiations and that “this [tax increase] sets that important precedent”.  Sandy Levin, ranking democrat on the Ways and Means Committee

When asked on CNN if there should be more taxes on the wealthy, he responded: “absolutely”.  And “We should have energy taxes that really fund infrastructure investment” Richard Durbin, (D) Illinois

“the truth is, everybody needs to pay more taxes, not just the rich”  Howard Dean, Former Vermont Governor and Democrat Party Chairman

 Unfortunately, we have an admitted redistributionist in office doing what redistributionists do best.  Oh, he’ll call it something else to appease you.  As various media outlets and our elected officials have speculated, they will make a case for the necessity of taxing capital gains at the same rates as ordinary income, a carbon tax, further elimination of tax “loopholes”, a value added tax, a “surcharge” on multi-million dollar homes, higher corporate taxes, a financial “transactions” tax, or a national sales tax, perhaps. In a competition for most outlandish tax proposals, New Hampshire politicians once proposed a “View Tax” based on the quality of scenery viewed from your home and New York officials once salivated over a “Tree Tax”, on the grounds that the trees on your property are potentially valuable as a commodity. Alas, there is no end in sight in our government’s creativity in fleecing the taxpayer. But he’s going to come knocking.  The tax man always rings twice.  Sometimes more.